In 2003, Arena magazine magazine listed Flynt as #1 on the "50 Powerful People in Porn" list.[5] Flynt is paralyzed from the waist down due to injuries sustained from a 1978 assassination attempt by the serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin.[6][7]

Since founding the magazine, Flynt has become an advocate of a liberal conception of free speech, under which profanity and pornography are classed as protected speech.

Flynt acquired national status when he published a satirical article defaming, in disgusting terms, preacher Jerry Falwell. Falwell sued Flynt, but lost in the Supreme Court, when the ACLU defended him. The case was dramatized in the 1996 film The People v. Larry Flynt, directed by Milos Forman, with Woody Harrelson as the notorious editor. Since Flynt's case, slanderous satire has been presumed acceptable as free speech.

Notes

↑ Flynt writes, "I have left my religious conversion behind and settled into a comfortable state of atheism": see the epilogue of Flynt and Ross

↑ "I am not saying he don't believe in God. I am just saying I don't believe in God. That puts me at odds with him." Larry King Live, January 10, 1996

↑ Flynt writes, "I have left my religious conversion behind and settled into a comfortable state of atheism": see the epilogue of Flynt and Ross

↑ "I am not saying he don't believe in God. I am just saying I don't believe in God. That puts me at odds with him." Larry King Live, January 10, 1996